Columbo (season 9)

This is a list of episodes from the ninth season of Columbo.

Columbo
Season 9
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	6
Release
Original network	ABC
Original release	November 25, 1989 – May 14, 1990
Season chronology

Episodes

No. in series	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Murderer played by	Victim played by	Original air date	Runtime
50	1	"Murder: A Self Portrait"	James Frawley	Robert Sherman	Patrick Bauchau	Fionnula Flanagan	November 25, 1989	98 min
Temperamental artist Max Barsini (Patrick Bauchau) effectively lives with three women: his ex-wife, Louise (Fionnula Flanagan), his young live-in model Julie (Isabel García Lorca), and his current wife Vanessa (Shera Danese). Barsini takes delight in the way they fight for his attention. But when Louise begins seeing a therapist, Dr. Hammer (George Coe), who is also her new fiancé, Barsini fears she will reveal that he killed his first agent, who was robbing him. He kills Louise, then makes it look like she drowned at the beach while he was at Vito's bar, painting. Columbo poses for Barsini while investigating him. Final clue/twist: Columbo can prove that a spot on Louise's face was not washed-up make-up but was instead remnants of "Barsini red", a special color mixed only for Barsini, and that it was on the cloth she was benumbed with.
51	2	"Columbo Cries Wolf"	Daryl Duke	William Read Woodfield	Ian Buchanan	Deidre Hall	January 20, 1990	98 min
When Dian Hunter (Deidre Hall), the partner of men's magazine publisher Sean Brantley (Ian Buchanan), vanishes after expressing a desire to sell her 51% interest to a rival, suspicion falls on Sean and his girlfriend Tina (Rebecca Staab). Columbo sets out to find the body, eventually digging up much of Brantley's estate and breaking open the walls. But after the search turns into a full-blown media event, Dian resurfaces, explaining she needed some time to herself. Dian and Sean planned the disappearance as a publicity stunt to increase sales. But to his shock, she actually intends to sell now that her holding is more valuable. Sean proceeds to then kill Dian for real and hides the body, believing that Columbo will not be allowed to search for it again. Richard Levinson and William Link wrote the story for this episode, but were uncredited. Final clue/twist: Dian apparently left wearing a fur coat. Columbo gets suspicious when he sees all her remaining fur coats in plastic storage bags, deducing that Brantley put the body in the missing bag. Knowing he will not be supported in a second full search, he phones the pager Dian wears as a wristlet: it is on her body, behind a finished section of the replacement wall being installed.
52	3	"Agenda for Murder"	Patrick McGoohan	Jeffrey Bloom	Patrick McGoohan	Louis Zorich	February 10, 1990	98 min
Oscar Finch (Patrick McGoohan) is a lawyer who uses underhanded methods to get his clients off, like coercing Paul Mackey (Denis Arndt), who worked for the D.A.'s office, into destroying evidence against racketeer Frank Staplin (Louis Zorich) in 1969. Twenty-one years later, Mackey is chosen by a presidential candidate, Governor Montgomery (Arthur Hill), to be his Vice Presidential running mate. Finch himself hopes that he might be appointed as the next Attorney General. Staplin, facing another indictment, threatens to expose the long-ago favor and ruin Finch's and Mackey's political futures if he doesn't arrange the destruction of another document. Finch decides to murder him. He scatters cigar ashes to make it seem he was in a late-night meeting with a contributor when the murder occurred. Finch walks to Staplin's house, shoots him and makes his death look like a suicide. Final clue/twist: After Columbo learns that Staplin hadn't eaten any of the cheese on the dish at the crime scene, but that the block of cheese had had a piece bitten off from it, he assumes that the murderer must have taken a bite. CSI can fabricate a toothprint from the cheese and Columbo finds more than enough samples of Finch's toothprint on his discarded pieces of chewing gum - proving that he was at the crime scene. Columbo puts the bite on him, so to speak. McGoohan won a second Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, following his part in "By Dawn's Early Light".
53	4	"Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo"	Vincent McEveety	Peter S. Fischer	Helen Shaver	Edward Winter	March 31, 1990	98 min
The episode is partially told in flashbacks from the funeral of Columbo's wife. Vivian Dimitri (Helen Shaver) is a real-estate executive whose recently deceased husband had been sent to prison by Columbo. She seeks revenge by plotting to kill the Columbos. But first she murders her boss, Charlie Chambers (Edward Winter), her husband's partner who avoided prison by informing on him. Vivian shoots Chambers in his office, using her affair with married Leland St. John (Ian McShane) to establish an alibi. Then she plants evidence to make it look like Chambers was killed by disgruntled residents of a new housing development he was constructing. Her plan is then to kill the Columbos with a jar of poisoned marmalade. Roscoe Lee Browne plays her psychiatrist, Dr. Steadman. Final clue/twist: Figuring out Vivian's plan, Columbo and the police fake the death of his wife. After the big "funeral", Columbo invites Vivian into what she thinks is his house. He makes himself toast with marmalade. While Columbo pretends to be dying of poison, Vivian confesses to all three murders. He then breaks character, and tells her that he'd suspected her all along, and had the marmalade tested as soon as she gave it to him. They are actually in the home of another officer, who recorded the confession, and the marmalade jar is a different one. Aired under the ABC Saturday Mystery.[1]
54	5	"Uneasy Lies the Crown"	Alan J. Levi	Steven Bochco	James Read	Marshall R. Teague	April 28, 1990	92 min
Dentist to the stars Dr. Wesley Corman (James Read) decides to get rid of his unfaithful wife Lydia (Jo Anderson) and use her money to support his gambling habit. So when Adam Evans (Marshall R. Teague), a Hollywood heartthrob having an affair with Corman's wife, comes under the dentist's care, Corman puts a time-release poison made from digitalis under a dental crown, one that takes effect just as Evans is making love to Corman's wife that evening, thereby framing her for the murder. Paul Burke co-stars as Horace Sherwin, Lydia's father, also a dentist. Final clue/twist: Columbo traps Corman by taking advantage of the fact that Corman was never good at chemistry. He orders Evans' body exhumed and demonstrates to Corman that if there was indeed digitalis, it would have caused a chemical reaction with the porcelain in the crown, making a blue stain on Evans' tooth underneath the crown. Before they begin to examine Evans' mouth, Corman confesses. Of course, Columbo faked the demonstration: there would be no such reaction. This same storyline was first used in the MacMillan & Wife episode "Affair of the Heart" that had aired in 1977. Bochco shared writing credit for the earlier version with Leonard Stern.
55	6	"Murder in Malibu"	Walter Grauman	Jackson Gillis	Andrew Stevens	Janet Margolin	May 14, 1990	90 min
Jess McCurdy (Brenda Vaccaro) fails to convince her sister, best-selling romance novelist Theresa Goren (Janet Margolin), to cancel her wedding to Wayne Jennings (Andrew Stevens), a playboy/tennis bum half her age and a gold digger. McCurdy impersonates her sister on the phone with Jennings and dumps him. Jennings reacts by killing Goren - twice. He arranges an alibi for the first murder, then returns and shoots her corpse. He allows Columbo to "catch" him for the second murder, which he confesses, but then "learns" that he had only shot a corpse, so is innocent of murder, which he assumes will be blamed on a burglar.. Final clue/twist: Columbo untangles the plot with his surprisingly detailed familiarity with the location of the tag on women's panties. He proved that someone else put Goren's underwear onto her corpse, and that this someone could only be a man, because only a man would put the panties on backwards. A murderous burglar wouldn't have bothered to dress the corpse; only Jennings would have a reason to do so, to help his alibi.

References

1. "COLUMBO: REST IN PEACE MRS. COLUMBO {ABC SATURDAY MYSTERY} (TV)". The Paley Center For Media. Retrieved 10 September 2013.